News for and about the Health 2.0 Community

Todd Park Named New U.S. Chief Technology Officer

The Obama Administration announced today that Todd Park will be the new U.S Chief Technology Officer. Park is moving from his role as CTO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to fill the position left by Aneesh Chopra in January. Chopra was sworn into office in May 2009 as the nation’s first CTO and was charged with helping to modernize the federal bureaucracy and develop websites and applications to increase transparency.

Park is known for his rallying speeches in which he spreads his message of “Data Liberación!” ― to make public health data available to patients, providers and researchers so we can learn what’s working and what’s not working in heath care.

“I have said in a lot of different settings that the number one barrier to health care changing is people believing that it can’t,” Park said back in 2010 at a Health 2.0 conference in Washington, D.C. (see the video below the fold). “People have gotten so cynical, so dispirited by the relative absence of change.”

Park’s own optimism was a huge force behind his 3-year effort to change and modernize the health care system. Among his accomplishments was the creation of HealthCare.gov, the first consumer website to provide an inventory of public and private health insurance plans available across the nation by zip code.